After the Canucks thrilling 4-3 win yesterday against the Boston Bruins yesterday, I decided to look for a Boston perspective on the game. What I read was downright frightening.

Say what you want about Vancouver’s media, but they don’t openly bend the truth to any degree that they do in Boston. It seems as though the Bruins can do no wrong with the Beantown scribes, much in the same way that the Republican party can do no wrong on Fox News.

It was an eventful afternoon for Shawn Thornton facing down a Vancouver Canucks team he’s come to hate over the last year.

Six Canucks players ganged up on him in front of the Canucks bench in a chain gang-style attack more appropriate in a prison laundry room rather than an NHL rink. The order of events was pretty simple: Thornton saw somebody slash at Daniel Paille as he exited the ice for a line change, he went to investigate the situation and then got tangled with the biting Burrows.

Burrows waved his stick blade around Thornton’s neck and it was on like Donkey Kong.

“I see myself as a pretty honest player,” said Thornton. “But, I’m not going to let someone spear me in the throat. I’m also a man so I stand up for myself.”

The six Canucks attackers doesn’t even count the two Canucks players sitting on the bench holding Thornton against the boards as six other Vancouver players attempted to work him over. Nathan Horton, Milan Lucic, Zdeno Chara and David Krejci ended up pulling bodies off the pile, but the image of six players attacking one guy was enough to make any NHL traditionalist’s stomach turn.

Poor Thornton. He must have left in a wheelchair after that kind of attack by eight people! Oh wait, he was totally fine? Probably cause he wasn’t Haggerty completely misrepresented the entire altercation. Check out the video below and skip to the 2:00 mark to see how the melee started.

Want a more accurate recap? Burrows taps Paille on the ankle. Thornton slashes Burrows (the euphemism used by Haggerty was that Thornton “investigated the situation”). Burrows poked his stick in Thornton’s chest (as opposed to Burrows spearing Thornton in the neck as was suggested by some in Boston). Thornton drops the gloves and goes after the much smaller Burrows, so his teammates stepped in (even suggesting that 6 players on the ice attacked Thornton is completely false, Hamhuis doesn’t go near him until the rest of the Bruins players pile in, while Henrik looked to join in but decided smartly to go to the bench because there were six skaters on the ice due to the line change). The players that stepped in immediately were Malhotra and Bieksa, who never threw punches followed by Weise and Lapierre. Lapierre was the only player visibly throwing punches.

Playing the Vancouver Canucks is like playing a collection of A-Rods or a full squad of Bill Laimbeers. The defending NHL Western Conference champions are a virtual conga line of Claude Lemieuxes and Ulf Samuelssons.

During a line change, Thornton got into a jam with Alexandre Burrows. Next thing he knew, there were Vancouver players on his back. He looked a little like Rob Gronkowski running toward the end zone wearing a bunch of Washington Redskins. It was especially amusing to see Maxim Lapierre cliff-diving into the pile once he knew it was safe.

This is basically typical of the Boston media. Every Bruin transgression gets wrapped up into a simple “got into a jam” package. Nevermind that Thornton slashed Burrows and charged after him dropped his gloves and swinging his fists. Nope. He was minding his own business when six Canucks attackers dropped out of the sky like ninjas and pummelled him!

On the play, Marchand had the puck along the boards, looked up to see 6-foot-3, 212-pound Vancover defenseman Sami Salo charging at him and ducked down low to avoid the hit. Salo flipped up over Marchand, hit the ice hard and suffered a concussion.

Please. To mention Salo’s height and weight is to suggest that he is some kind of monster that was planning on delivering a bone crushing hit. Watch the replay, Salo is hardly charging at him. He wasn’t going at him with a lot of speed. Furthermore, how often has Salo ever delivered a big hit? Has he ever injured anyone? I can’t recall one and I have been watching him play hockey for ten years. Also, Brad Marchand has a history of this exact type of hit, and in the past it was done maliciously. Sort of like his hit on Daniel Sedin, after the whistle in last year’s Stanley Cup final. Was Marchand afraid of getting nailed by Daniel Sedin on that hit too? Sorry, I meant to say, was he afraid of getting nailed by 6-foot-1, 187 pound Daniel Sedin when he CHARGED at him? There, that’s better.

I’m not sure how any objective observer could watch the game played yesterday and come to such ridiculous conclusions. I think the rest of the hockey world saw what Canucks fans have known all along. The Bruins are a big, tough team, but they also take cheap shots and complain a whole heck of a lot. When they go after players, it’s honourable, and when players go after them, it’s cowardly. It seems as though they have brainwashed their cheerleaders media members as well.

Author Description

Rob is a regular guy with super human hockey knowledge. He used to work for the Vancouver Canucks and coached minor hockey. Rob plays hockey too.

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